Ukraine: Ukraine's military reportedly captured a record number of Russian troops as part of a power surge that forced Moscow to flee quickly as they increased their territorial gains, in some places pushed to the north-eastern border of the country.
According to a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence, Russian troops are reportedly giving up in large numbers because they "understand the hopelessness of their position". According to the adviser to the President of Ukraine, there are so many POWs that there is not enough space for all of them.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian flags in blue and yellow were flown over a large area of ​​reclaimed land over newly liberated towns.
According to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv's military has recently reclaimed about 6,000 square kilometers (2,400 sq mi) of land. It represents a small part of Ukraine's total land area of ​​about 600,000 km.
Zelensky said Ukraine and the West should "strengthen cooperation to defeat Russian terrorism" in a video address late on Monday.
The amount of land reclaimed is roughly equal to the combined areas of Gaza and the West Bank.
Since the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Russia has controlled about 5% of the country.
The momentum, after months of little or no apparent movement on the battlefield, has boosted Ukrainian morale and sparked unusual public criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war.
The governor of the Northeast Kharkiv region, Oleh Sinihubov, claimed that in some areas of the front, his forces had reached the state border with the Russian Federation.
The retaliation after suffering its biggest military defeat in Ukraine left the Kremlin to answer as Russian forces withdrew from areas close to Kyiv after a failed attempt to take the capital early in the offensive.
In a map that showed its troops pushed back along a small strip of land on the Russian border, the Russian Defense Ministry indirectly acknowledged the defeat and significant Ukrainian gains.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov avoided a reporter's question whether Putin still believed in the military hierarchy.
Targeted military operation continues. And this will continue until the initial objectives according to Peskov are fulfilled.
Putin was seen on state television on Monday chairing a meeting on the economy, where he claimed Russia was doing well despite Western sanctions.
He claimed that the economic attack strategy and the attacks carried out by him had failed.
As the Russian troops retreated, reports of chaos grew.
Early in the morning, the Russians arrived. Then at noon, they suddenly started screaming hysterically and fled, charging in tanks and armored vehicles, according to Dmitry Hrushchenko, a resident of the recently liberated city of Zaliznichne, which lies close to the Eastern Front Line.
In military videos, soldiers can be seen hoisting the Ukrainian flag over buildings that were damaged in the war. In one scene a fighter wipes his shoes on a Russian flag lying on the ground. In other videos, Ukrainians can be seen examining the rusted remains of Russian military vehicles, including tanks.
The potential of the Ukrainian Blitz to mark a turning point in the war was not yet clear. In the past the pace has repeatedly gone back and forth, but rarely with such a sharp swing.
"I would say this is both important and dangerous," former CIA director and US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Bloomberg television. Panetta expressed concern that if Russia felt it was in danger of being defeated, it could decide to escalate the conflict, possibly even by launching a strategic nuclear attack.
It is risky because if Putin is cornered they will have to retaliate.
According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Kyiv "will increasingly dictate the location and nature of major battles."
According to the British Ministry of Defense, the retreat would likely undermine the Russian army's confidence in its commanders and damage Moscow's forces.
Adviser to the President of Ukraine Oleksiy Erestovich did not provide a figure for the number of Russian prisoners, but said they would be exchanged for Ukrainian troops held by Moscow.
According to military intelligence spokesman Andrey Yusov, Russian officials made up a "significant" number of captured soldiers.
The deputy interior minister of Ukraine accused fleeing Russian forces of destroying official records and hiding bodies in an effort to hide human rights abuses in the regions they ruled up until last week.
Throughout the nation, people were celebrating.
Authorities in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city and the capital of the region where the gains have been made, celebrated the restoration of power and water to about 80% of the population of the region following Russian attacks on the region's infrastructure that caused many areas of Ukraine to lose electricity.
Russian military bloggers and other commentators criticised the Kremlin for failing to mobilise more forces and take stronger action against Ukraine, which revealed signs of disarray in Russia.
Russia has consistently avoided referring to its invasion as a war, referring to it instead as a "special military operation," and relying on a small number of volunteers rather than a large-scale mobilisation that could ignite civil unrest and protest.
Former MP Boris Nadezhdin claimed on a talk show on NTV that "people who convinced President Putin that the operation will be fast and effective... these people really set up all of us." We've reached the point where we must realise that using these resources and colonial war tactics, Ukraine cannot be defeated.
Some Russians attributed the losses to Western fighters and weapons. In reference to one of the regions where Russia claims to have withdrew troops, a headline in the state-sponsored newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda stated, "It's not Ukraine that attacked Izium, but Nato."
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